Unconventional and strange, Codro (a nickname combining his surname and the name of a minor and ill-fated poet from the Flavian period) belonged to a particular category of Renaissance courtier: grateful to his benefactors, but always independent and proudly faithful to himself. Beloved by his students for his open and engaging teaching method, he was able to explain, using “low” language, the complex culture of the time, made even more fascinating by the rediscovery of Greek classicism.
Born in 1446 near Reggio Emilia, Antonio Cortesi Urceo (from Orzi Novi, his family’s village of origin, outside Brescia) studied briefly in Modena and then had the luck to be sent to Ferrara in 1465. There, he became the student of Battista Guarini, son of the distinguished pedagogue Guarino Veronese, from whom he absorbed a love for Greek and modern educational methods that had been until that time reserved for the scions of the most prestigious Renaissance courts.
In 1469, thanks to his teacher Luca Ripa, he was offered a teaching position in Forlì, where he revived the Accademia dei Filergiti, founded in 1370 by Giacomo Allegretti. He immediately won admiration for his teaching skills, to the point that he was made a citizen (he is referred to as ‘forlivese’, from Forlì, in many sources) and hired by the ruler of the city, Pino III Ordelaffi, as a tutor for his son Sinibaldo.
When Forlì was given by Sixtus IV to his nephew Girolamo Riario and his wife Caterina Sforza in 1480, however, Codro decided to move to Bologna.
The humanist also quickly won admiration at the University of Bologna, appreciated as much by his students (including many foreigners, such as the Poles Nicolaus Copernicus and Andrzej Krzycki and the French Jean de Pins) as by the local lords, including the Bentivoglio, which hired him as a tutor for the family’s children.
Codro’s success was most importantly tied to his way of teaching, which was at once unconventional and ironic, stimulating and enjoyable.
His use of “low” language to explain even the most lofty subjects revealed his passion for Plautus, whose Aulularia he completed with painstaking linguistic and poetic care.
Unlike Beroaldo il Vecchio and some of his other colleagues, he did not, however, transcribe any of his lectures for publication, remaining faithful to a Socratic oral method rooted in the idea of spontaneous, colloquial teaching. Fortunately for us, his students managed to transcribe fourteen of his sermons (oral lectures), which were included in the collection Opera omnia (1502) published two years after his death (1500).
The epigrams, letters, eclogue, satire and miscellanies (Sylvea) reveal the wide-ranging thinking of their author, who often spared no effort in praising his benefactors, but was never prone to serve them.
Codro was indeed one of the few scholars who was not recruited into politics as a Bentivoglio courtier. Fiercely protective of his intellectual freedom, he was similar in this way to the young Amico Aspertini, whose was putting his own spin on the local Renaissance style in those years with his eccentric paintings.
Not even Codro’s approach to Greek followed the orthodox paths of his fellow specialists. Codro was not a philologist and pursued Greek with passionate curiosity (three of his translations, preserved in the University of Bologna Library, are an example). His approach to the discipline, which had been promoted at the school for a few decades thanks to the cultural and university reforms of Cardinal Bessarion (1453), was nevertheless able to captivate his students and win him the esteem of some of some of the greatest scholars in the field (Poliziano asked for his thoughts about a few Greek epigrams and Aldo Manuzio dedicated his vast collection of Greek letter-writers to him).
Codro’s eccentric, unconventional life is also reflected in his personal approach to religion: syncretic, superstitious and at times visionary. He was the subject of heated criticism and accusations, even from his own students. His language, which at times bordered on blasphemy, was scandalous, while his conception of the world shared similarities with Epicurean philosophy, which is itself actually marked by a profundity rarely found in others. For Codro, reality was nothing more than illusion and folly in continuous metamorphosis, contrary to the truths of religion, which could only be perceived through faith.